I’m working my way through a 33-page review of scholarship on instructional change in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) disciplines. The authors reviewed an impressive 191 conceptual and empirical journal articles.

The process of designing any sort of human experience, regardless of purpose or platform, is centered around reaching a desired outcome, ideally with as little fuss and as much joy as possible.

The purpose of an experience and the platform on which the experience takes place will vary: purchasing a plane ticket on a tablet to vacation, enjoying a musical performance in a theater, or learning to code in a classroom. Although each of these experiences require their own unique methods and frameworks, the elements that should be taken into consideration during the design process remain mostly the same.

As a learning experience designer, you should focus your time and attention during the strategy plane on identifying the gaps that exist between the learner and his/her desired outcome. Those gaps exist due to a lack of the following:

Knowledge: Do learners lack the proper information to complete a task?Skill: Do they have all of the right information but lack the ability to translate that knowledge into action that could be applied to a given situation?Confidence: Are they able to demonstrate or apply the skill, but do they hesitate or refuse to apply it?Motivation: Are they able to demonstrate or apply the skill confidently but just don’t want to do it?Access: Do they have all of the above but lack the proper tools or resources to complete a task?

Once you are able to properly identify the gaps that cause learners to struggle, you must design a solution that effectively addresses those gaps.

Just like any experiences, learning experiences also need to well designed. After deciding on outcome to be achieved of learning particular course (learning outcome), gaps to reaching the outcome should be identified at requirement plane, strategy plane, interaction plane and sensory plane. In course of doing so, gaps in knowledge, skills, confidence, motivation and access that learners may have should be addressed through course delivery, that careful planning be made through the planning, determination of objectives, implementation and evaluation stage of curriculum.

The Commonwealth of Learning is experimenting with a groundbreaking (excuse the pun) form of MOOCs for subsistence farmers and people who work as gardeners in the central and eastern parts of the Gangetic Plain. The MOOC is delivered entirely by audio messages to participants' phones (basic cell phones, not smart phones).

Learning is inherently satisfying. All of us have experienced the joy of learning and discovery at some point in time in our life. Learning leads to better understanding, new knowledge, skills and expertise. Whether it is learning how to ride a bike,...

I joined Audrey Watters, Philipp Schmidt, Stephen Downes, and Jeremy Friedberg in Toronto last week, to give a talk at Digital Learning Reimagined, an event hosted and organized by Ryerson University s Chang School.

The family computer recently stopped working. This wouldn’t be the end of the world normally, however, my oldest son’s second-grade classroom implemented a new homework policy. Instead of having homework on paper, all homework is done on the computer across three sites.

Sources and Tags: Dennis O'Connor's Curating Secrets

There's no question that Dennis O'Connor has found much success on Scoop.it. It wasn't all coincidental, though. Dennis shared with us two of his best curation secrets and tricks:

1. Develop multiple sources for your topicsIt's important to carefully think through the keywords that you set for your topic so that Scoop.it can crawl the web and provide you with interesting and relevant content and inspiration. In addition to taking full advantage of this, Dennis also uses other tools like Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Prismatic to find content to share on Scoop.it. Once he finds the content he wants to share with his audience, he uses Scoop.it as his social media hub to add value to that content and share it everywhere.

2. Tag your postsDennis takes a lot of time to tag each of his posts. This allows him, he explained, to assemble publications based upon his tagged topics. When he's using his information on Scoop.it for his E-learning classes, it's easy for him to filter his Scoop.it pages based upon different subjects and easily compile a list of posts and articles on appropriate topics to provide to his students. Something interesting that Dennis does with his tagged articles is to pull them by subject and create "special editions" of his topics on his blog for special classes and events that he is teaching.

While the original Scoop graphic and comments relate to 'curation skills' - I felt it was relevant to share with students as it offers a model incorporating 'ethical' consideration through the research process.

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.